red paper boat

By 1852, the fate of the Donner Party would have been well known to anyone traveling the various emigrant trails. The site of the cabins quickly became a sort of tourist attraction, and so it’s no surprise that anyone going over the same road would take note of it in their diary.

Monday, September 13th [1852]

Very cold this morning, but became quite pleasant when the sun got above the mountain tops. Had very good road this forenoon and nooned in a little valley with excellent grass and water. This afternoon we passed Starvation Camp, which took its name from a party of emigrants, who, in 1846 attempted to reach Oregon by a southern route, but getting belated in the mountains, the snow came on and buried up their cattle. Here they were forced to remain several weeks, and were, it is said, reduced to the terrible extremity of cannibilism, and but six were living when relief came to them. It is the most desolate, gloomy looking place I ever saw. There were the ruins of two or three cabins down in a deep dark canyon, surrounded by stumps ten to fifteen feet high, where they were cut off above the snow.

Donner Lake, a beautiful sheet of water, not far from here, was named in remembrance of the party.

We camped in a small valley, about three miles west of this place.

Egbert, Eliza Ann McAuley, 1835-1919, Diary of Eliza Ann McAuley Egbert, September, 1852, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 4: 1952: The California Trail. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

So many of the diaries of the covered wagon women are filled with passages about how difficult and exhausting the journey was. Stories upon stories of days upon days spent searching for food and water for their livestock, of fording the same dangerous river five, six, or seven times to avoid treacherous landscapes, and of sickness, starvation, and death among their companions and animals. Some of the diarists show a fair bit of good humor in their writings, but so far none has equaled the following passage in its expression of pure, lighthearted joy over what surely could have been a tragic event. And to think that it happened so near to where others had suffered through one of the worst experiences imaginable.

Tuesday, September 14th, 1852

While the teams were toiling slowly up to the summit, Father, Mr. Buck, Margaret and I climbed one of the highest peaks near the road, and were well repaid for our trouble by the splendid view. On one side the snow-capped peaks rise in majestic grandeur, on the other they are covered to their summits with tall pine and fir, while before us in the top of the mountains, apparently an old crater, lies a beautiful lake in which the Truckee takes its rise. Turning our eyes from this, we saw the American flag floating from the summit of one of the tallest peaks. We vented our patriotism by singing “The Star Spangled Banner” and afterward enjoyed a merry game of snow ball. Turning to descend, the mountain side looked very steep and slippery, and Margaret and I were afraid to venture it. Father, who is a very active man for his age (about sixty) volunteered to show us how to descend a mountain. “Just plant your heels firmly in the snow, this way,” he said, but just then, his feet flew from under him and he went sailing down the mountain side with feet and hands in the air. After a minute of horrified silence we saw him land and begin to pick himself up, when we gave way to peals of laughter. We found an easier way down and rejoined the train, and tonight we camp in Summit Valley on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas, and are really in California.

Egbert, Eliza Ann McAuley, 1835-1919, Diary of Eliza Ann McAuley Egbert, September, 1852, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 4: 1952: The California Trail. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

I love the following passage. Jean Rio Griffiths Baker, newly widowed, was caught up in the promise of the Mormon Church, and so she left her home in England to travel to America and the new Mormon settlement in Salt Lake City. Her journey began in Liverpool, where bad weather on the Irish Sea kept her party below decks for the first few weeks. Once out on the open ocean and under calmer conditions, she reflected on the two extremes and found them both equally awe-inspiring.

[February] 14 [1851]

I can hardly describe the beauty of this night, the Moon nearly at full with a deep blue Sky, studded with stars the reflection of which makes the sea appear like an immense sheet of diamonds, and here are we walking the deck at 9 o’clock in the evening without bonnet or shawl; what a contrast to this day three weeks, when we were shivering between decks, and not able to keep our feet, without holding fast to something or other, and if we managed to get on the upper deck, the first salute was a great lump of water in the face; Well I have seen the mighty deep in its anger with our ship nearly on her beam-ends, and I have seen it, (as now) under a cloudless sky, and scarcely a ripple on its surface, and I know not which to admire most.

Baker, Jean Rio Griffiths, 1810-1883, Diary of Jean Rio Baker, February, 1851, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 3: 1851. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

I have often wondered what motivated women, like Jean, who left their homes for the great unknowable. I also wonder how they found things at the end of the journey. Was it all as they’d envisioned? Surely there were many who were ultimately disappointed in their strange new homeland. Did they make peace with their disillusionment, or did they regret the decision to set out on that great adventure? In Jean’s case, it would appear that she was not wholly happy with the way her life ended up. After nearly twenty years, she added the following passage to her diary.

[Addendum to Diary of Jean Rio Griffiths Baker]

September 29th, 1869 — I have been 18 years this day, an inhabitant of Utah Territory, and I may say 18 years of hard toil, and almost continual disappointment. My 20 acre farm tuned out to be a mere salaratus patch, killing the seed which was sown, instead of producing a crop; and I am now in Ogden City, living in a small log house, and working at my trade, as a dressmaker . . . I came here in obedience to what I believed to be a revelation of the most High God; trusting in the assurance of the Missionaries, whom I believe to have been the spirit of truth, I left my home, sacrificed my property, broke up every dear association, and what was, and is yet, dearer than all, left my beloved native land, and for what? A Bubble that has burst in my grasp. . . In 1864 I married Mr. Edward Pearce, I had been a widow 15 years, my children all married, and I felt I had the right to decide for myself, in a matter that only concerned myself. I hoped that my old age would be cheered by his companionsip that I should no longer be alone. But it was not to be; he only lived six months. . .

Baker, Jean Rio Griffiths, 1810-1883, Diary of Jean Rio Baker, September 29, 1869, quoted in By Windjammer and Prairie Schooner, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 3: 1851. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

So far in my readings, there have been two stories of of the tragic deaths of children, both under the wheels of a wagon.

I was reminded of watching Frontier House. At the beginning of the series, the families received a crash course in things like cooking over an open fire and handling livestock. They were given an extra warning to be careful with the children around the wagons. And, in fact, professionals were brought in to drive the wagons to their destination, because it’s such a dangerous task. At one point, one of the wagons got away from the driver and one of the children nearly was hurt.

I wonder how common those sorts of accidents were, on the westward trails. As Lucia notes, one minute your child is whole and healthy, and the next, he’s gone. And she couldn’t even take time to stop and mourn him. All she could do was bury him and carry on her way.

Milwaukee, [Oregon] September 16, ’51

Dear Mother:

We have been living in Oregon about 2 weeks, all of us except little John, and him we left 12 miles this side of Green River. He was killed instantly by falling from a wagon and the wheels running over his head. After leaving the desert and Green River, we came to a good place of feed and laid by a day for the purpose of recruiting our teams. On the morning of the 20th of June we started on. John rode on the wagon driven by Edwin Fellows. We had not proceeded more than 2 miles before word came for us to turn back. We did so but found him dead. The oxen had taken fright from a horse that had been tied behind the wagon preceding this, owned by a young man that Mr. Williams had told a few minutes to turn out of the road. Two other teams ran also. John was sitting in back of the wagon but as soon as the cattle commenced to run he went to the front and caught hold of the driver who held him as long as he could but he was frightened and did not possess presence of mind enough to give him a little send, which would have saved him. Poor little fellow, we could do nothing for him. He was beyond our reach and Oh, how suddenly, one half hour before we had left him in health as lively as a lark, and then to find him breathless so soon was awful. I cannot describe to you our feelings. We buried him there by the road side, by the right side of the road, about onehalf mile before we crossed the Fononelle, a little stream. We had his grave covered with stones to protect if from wild beasts and a board with his name and age and if any of our friends come through I wish they would find his grave and if it needs, repair it.

Williams, Lucia Loraine Bigelow, 1816-1874, Letter from Lucia Loraine Williams, September 16, 1851, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 3: 1851. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Near Lander, Wyoming
Photo credit: Clint Gardner

This passage jumped out at me not because it’s intrinsically interesting, but because I have been making the very same assumption as the author. Many of the diaries describe the difficulties of crossing the western mountains: double teaming, chaining wagon wheels, and hoisting and lowering the wagons with ropes. And when I read the phrase “mountain pass,” the picture in my mind is always of a narrow slit in towering rocks, not a 15 mile wide expanse of rolling mountaintop prairie.

Sunday June 21 [1851]

Travelled 17½ miles camp on Pacific Spring which is the first camp after you get through south pass. There we saw the far famed south pass, but did not see it until we had passed it for I was all the time looking for some narrow place that would almost take your breath away to get through but was disappointed. It is a body of table land rooling but not mountainous and is 15 miles wide being the pleasantest place I have yet seen. The altitude here is 7 thousand & 30 ft. We have been on a gradual accend since we left Larimi and now we shall decend the same to the pacific at Pacific Spring the water begins to run to the pacific verry cold to day Water standing the night of the 20 froze a quarter of inch thick on a pail in sight of snow all the time from 5 to 8 ft deep side the road in some places north side mountain.

Hadley, Amelia, 1825-1866, Diary of Amelia Hadley, June, 1851, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 3: 1851. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.